Contemporary Issues In Agriculture
Lecture #6
Murray State University
High School Students
 Today is about issues that negatively contradict high yield
farming.
 Before we begin, I must say that it is the position of Murray
State University School of Agriculture to be in support of
Agricultural methods that sustain life for the entire planet.
 This includes high yield farming!
 Throughout today’s lecture, I would ask that you continually
ask yourselves the question, how is this going to help us with
the year 2050 approaching?
Also before we begin:
 I am listing a couple of websites where you may pull articles
that I have gathered this information from.
 Please read these articles.
 The attitudes conveyed in these articles are symbolic of the
general opinion of the rest of the world that is antiagriculture.
 Please note, they may raise some validity, however, ultimately
we must ask the question: “Do we want large-scale farming?
Or do we want large-scale starvation?”
Articles to print and read:
 I also understand that you may need to take a day to read these






articles before discussing.
This will be up to you and your teacher.
Have fun!
http://www.agribusinessaction.org/clearinghouse/documents/A
griBizClimate4-8short.pdf
http://www.pjstar.com/news/x1522163081/Chemical-drift-agrowing-concern-for-rural-residents
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/podcast/20
10/08/when-is-wind-energy-noise-pollution
http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/farmer-in-chief/
Issues To Discuss
 Agriculture and Noise Pollution
 Is Noise Pollution Comparable to Odor?
 Agriculture and Air Quality- Are chemicals in the air unsafe?
 Chemical Drift
 Michael Pollan Who he is:
 What he stands for:
 Why is writing the president?
 What three problems does he link to the industrial food system?
Does Agriculture Cause Noise
Pollution?
 What is Noise Pollution?
 -annoying and potentially harmful environmental noise
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Do Ag. Practices contribute to noise
pollution?
 "When does wind become an unacceptable source of noise
pollution?"
 “Since Fox Islands Wind installed 3 GE 1.5 MW wind
turbines on the island community last fall, a group of
residents within a half mile of the turbines have complained
that the turbines are not only too loud, but sometimes
psychologically disturbing.”
What does that mean?
 Psychologically disturbing?
 Is it possible that wind turbine noise may be psychologically
disturbing?
 Is it possible to link wind turbine noise to hog or chicken
barn odor?
Windmill’s create unpleasant noise
 “Experts from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
have gone to the island to study both objective sound levels
and subjective reactions to the turbines.”
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsCy_MgXrn0
Medical Illnesses?
 “Industrial Wind Turbines, Infrasound and Vibro-
Acoustic Disease (VAD): May 31, 2007...Documented in
a press release dated May 31, 2007 from the Vibro-Acoustic
Disease (VAD) research group in Portugal, people living in
the shadow of industrial wind turbines have moved a step
closer to understanding the nature of the Wind Turbine
Syndrome many of them experience and complain about.”
 (Save Western NY, 2007)
Why are we using wind anyway?
 A cost effective source of energy
 Technology already exists and is in place
 It is renewable and pollution free
 Other sources of energy are more environmentally damaging
 Other sources of energy are in dwindling supply
Read more at Suite101: Wind Power As a Green Energy
Source: Today's Energy: Clean Environmentally Friendly
Wind Generators
http://environmentalism.suite101.com/article.cfm/windpower-as-a-green-energy-source#ixzz0yKuC8Ovy
Thus- An issue
 Though clean energy, wind energy still proposes a problem:
NOISE.
 Thoughts?
 Should individuals living close to windmills have to deal with
it?
 Should we take down windmills?
 Which is the lesser of two evils?
 Dirty energy or noise pollution?
Chemical Drift
 EPA will reconsider ban on chemical drift
 “The original proposal that EPA put forward on spray drift
was a zero tolerance—essentially saying that if you sprayed
any sort of chemical that had an adverse effect, that it would
be a violation of the label.”
 (Brownfield Ag News, 2010)
 http://brownfieldagnews.com/2010/05/11/epawill-reconsider-ban-on-chemical-drift/
 Please click on website and read the first few
paragraphs. Thanks!
Zero Tolerance
 Should there be zero tolerance on chemical drift for




agriculture chemicals?
Why or why not?
Is it too much to ask?
Is it ridiculous?
Are agriculture chemicals that harmful?
From the article from pjstar.com
Isolated instances against drift.
 "My vineyard was burned real bad this spring. I can't tell the
extent yet, but it's bad," Hahn said. "All my neighbors know
I have grapes, and they all know what 2,4-D (drift) does to
grapes, but someone used it.“
 “Cal Snow, a retired high school teacher, has watched
chemical drift from a nearby farm field billow over children
playing in his subdivision south of Lacon.”
Discuss these cases: Should we do
away with chemical spraying?
 Across Illinois Route 26 from Snow's subdivision, Gary
Barnes, a retired minister, has filed complaints about
chemical drift with the Illinois Department of Agriculture for
14 years.
 (PJ Star, 2009)
Is Agriculture a Contributor to
Greenhouse emissions?
 “The largest single factor stoking global warming may be the
industrial food system.”
 “The average meat-eating American devours 200 pounds of
meat each year and contributes 2,520 grams of CO2 to the
atmosphere every day.”
 (A Harvest of Heat, 2010)
Issues with the Green Revolution:
 “The Green Revolution, featuring “miracle seeds” fueled by
an elixir of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, was supposed
to end to world hunger.”
 “Turned out that injecting artificial accelerants into the
ground was slowly destroying soil fertility (and spilling CO2
into the air).”
 (A Harvest of Heat, 2010)
Market Driven removal of forestry
 “In Latin America, deforestation is driven by the pressure to
raise and export beef, soybeans and agrofuels.”
 “In Southeast Asia, large landowners are turning forests into
palm oil plantations for cheap consumer products and
agrofuel export.”
More Production = More CO2
 “This market-driven devastation unleashes CO2, destroys
self-sustaining rural communities and undercuts local food
security.”
Inefficient
 “United States Farming practices typically require 10 calories
of fuel to produce each calorie of food.”
 “In the US, meat, grains and produce travel an average of
1,500 miles before reaching the dinner table.”
The Agrofuel “Solution”
 “In 2005, the Global Forest Resources Assessment reported
that tropical rainforests were vanishing at the rate of 100,000
acres every day.”

Rainforests are vital to the U.S.
 “One of the greatest threats to the world’s great forests — in
the Amazon, Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea —
is the expansion of soy and palm oil plantations to produce
cheap consumer goods (from body lotions to lipstick), animal
feed and agrofuels.”
Agrofuel Boom
 “The agrofuel boom triggered by the 2007 Energy
Independence and Security Act has fueled the expansion of
large grain, biotech and oil companies.”
Michael Pollan’s Take on Agriculture
 Who is Michael Pollan?
 Author of:
 In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
 The Omnivore’s Dilemma
 Also- Professor of Journalism at University of Cal. Berkley
 Also- Co-Director of the movie Food, Inc.
 You will need to know these facts. (hint, hint)
Farmer in Chief
 “Make the reform of the entire food system one of the
highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you
will not be able to make significant progress on the health
care crisis, energy independence or climate change.”
 (Pollan, 2008)
Continued Pollan:
 “After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any
other sector of the economy — 19 percent.“
 “And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the
way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to
the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37
percent, according to one study.”
 “1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie
of fossil-fuel energy”
 “now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a
single calorie of modern supermarket food”
 Activity: How many fossil fuel calories in a box of twinkies?
Healthcare issues:
 “Four of the top 10 killers in America today are chronic
diseases linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes
and cancer.”
 “national spending on health care went from 5 percent to 16
percent of national income, spending on food has fallen by a
comparable amount- from 18 to 10 percent”
Organic Foods:
 “There is a gathering sense among the public that the
industrial-food system is broken.”
 “Markets for alternative kinds of food — organic, local,
pasture-based, humane — are thriving as never before.”
Sunlight Farming:
 “There are many moving parts to the new food agenda I’m
urging you to adopt, but the core idea could not be simpler:
we need to wean the American food system off its heavy
20th-century diet of fossil fuel and put it back on a diet of
contemporary sunshine.”
Wartime Weapons become Farming
Inputs:
 “After World War II, the government encouraged the
conversion of the munitions industry to fertilizer —
ammonium nitrate being the main ingredient of both bombs
and chemical fertilizer — and the conversion of nerve-gas
research to pesticides.”
Ambitious Goals:
 “These goals are admittedly ambitious, yet they will not be
difficult to align or advance as long as we keep in mind this
One Big Idea: most of the problems our food system faces
today are because of its reliance on fossil fuels, and to the
extent that our policies wring the oil out of the system and
replace it with the energy of the sun, those policies will
simultaneously improve the state of our health, our
environment and our security”
3 Problems:
 What three problems would change, according to Michael
Pollan, if agriculture could be “fixed.”
Big Questions on Michael Pollan
 1. Can organic farming sustain life on the planet in the year
2050?
 2. How do his proposals mimic the way we farmed 100 years
ago?

What was the American health like in 1910?
 3. Is there validity to Michael Pollan’s ideas?
 4. How does Michael Pollan contradict Norman Borlaug’s
philosophy?
 5. Who would win in a fight? Michael Pollan or Norman
Borlaug? Or Chuck Norris?
Comparative Analysis:
 Activity:
 Grab a partner
 On one side of the page put Norman Borlaug.
 On the other side put Michael Pollan.
 Draw a line down the center.
 Now compare and contrast the two.
 How are they alike?
 How are they different?